The website was attacked for including criticism of Wikileaks in its recent FRONTLINE special "WikiSecrets". (Source: PBS)

Fake stories include one that claimed late-rapper Tupac Shakur was discovered to be living

PBS has become the latest victim of a concerted hacking
campaign. The party responsible is a familiar one -- they're the same
group that recently hacked Sony Corp. But this time around their motives
were different. The hackers this time were using the hack to show their
support for embattled website Wikileaks.

I. PBS Stirs the Pot With Wikileaks Special

A PBS special "WikiSecrets" aired last Tuesday as part of the news agency's FRONTLINE program,
which tackles tough issues. The program offered a surprisingly
comprehensive view that showcased various parties offering both the praise of Wikileaks and
its chief (suspected) informant U.S. Army Spc. Bradley Manning, and criticism
of the aforementioned.

But advocates of the controversial leaks site took issue with the negative
portions of the program. Particularly touchy to supporters was a section in
which writers for the British newspaper Guardian claimed that Wikileaks founder
Julian Assange had said that Iraqi and Afghani allies to the U.S. "deserve
to die".

As Guardian is an extremely prestigious publication, on par
with The New York Times in the U.S., this was a heady
accusation. Supporters of the site blasted PBS and Guardian claiming
that Mr. Assange's comment was taken out of context or fabricated.

Among those offended were a group of savvy hackers.

II. Tupac's Back?

On Sunday, the PBS blog "PBS Newshour" saw a
surprising story get posted, claiming that late-rapper Tupac Shakur was back.
This wasn't some sort of strange take on the recent Meek Mill hit; it
actually claimed the late rapper was found alive.

The post claimed that Mr. Shakur actually did not die from the 1996 shooting
and was instead "alive and well in a small resort in New Zealand".
It cited "locals" as a source and claimed that Notorious B.I.G.
was also alive and had lived in the town for some time.

Tupac Shakur, perhaps the most famous gangster rapper of the 1990s, was
murdered in Sept. 1996. Notorious B.I.G. (real name Christopher George
Latore Wallace) was murdered soon after in March 1997. The murders ended
the multi-platinum careers of both artists and shocked the rap industry.

The murders have lent fodder to conspiracy theories -- both serious and
sensational over the years, thanks to the unsolved nature of both murders and
questionable ties between LAPD officers and thuggish Death Row Records CEO
Marion "Suge" Knight, Jr.

PBS was left scrambling to remove the post and others. The
news organization posted a statement, commenting:

Last night there was an intrusion to PBS's
servers. The erroneous information on the 'PBS Newshour' site has been
corrected. The intruders also posted login information to two internal
sites—one that press use to access PBS Pressroom and an internal
communications website for stations.

Teresa Gorman, who works in social media and online engagement for the PBS
program "NewsHour," published a series of
Twitter posts today commenting on the breach. She
comments, "If you missed it: our site has been accessed by hackers. Thanks
for staying with us."

III. LulzSec Claims Responsibility for Post

In a series of updates on
Twitter a team of hackers who call themselves "LulzSec" mocked PBS,
pointing out the hack and eventually claiming responsibility for it.

The hackers wrote:
"Oh s–, what happened to @PBS?"

...then:
"What's wrong with @PBS, how come all of its servers are rooted? How come
their database is seized? Why are passwords cracked? :("

After posting links to usernames and passwords, the group wrote:
"Oh yes, that's right... #Sownage tomorrow. We hope. We decided to
obliterate @PBS instead out of distraction."

In addition to the Tupac page, LulzSec or its affiliates posted a story
entitled "Unicorns Dragons and Chix With Swords". They also
created a page titled "FREE BRADLEY MANNING. F– FRONTLINE!" that
contained the text "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO LULZSEC."

Some of the pages are still available courtesy of Google's or Freeze.it's
cache, though they've been removed from PBS's site [1] [2] [3].

LulzSec has released a longer statement via pastebin, commenting:

Greetings, Internets. We just finished watching
WikiSecrets and were less than impressed. We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over
to the PBS servers for further... perusing. As you should know by now, not even
that fancy-ass fortress from the third shitty Pirates of the Caribbean movie
(first one was better!) can withhold our barrage of chaos and lulz. Anyway,
unnecessary sequels aside... wait, actually: second and third Matrix movies
sucked too! Anyway, say hello to the insides of the PBS servers, folks. They
best watch where they're sailing next time.

The statement was posted along with links to the "gathered"
information here.

IV. Who is LulzSec?

The group's bio asserts:

We are LulzSec, a small team of 80-year-old men
and people who smoke on webcam. Right?

The group, which says it has no affiliation with Anonymous (who shares similar
adversaries) is part of the growing hacker/griefer web movement, that contains such players as GNAA (whose full name
contains a profane racial slur) and the slightly more sedate Gnosis, who hacked Gawker Media last year.

LulzSec gained attention for being one of the groups to hack several Sony sites via SQL injection last
week. SQL injections attacks are considered rather "easy" hacks
-- by contrast the PBS attack appeared much more sophisticated and
in-depth.

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quote: These alleged concerns are in fact just clever ways of disguising a growing movement within the US government to suppress dissenting views, eviscerate free speech and control the press.

Just out of curiousity, what would you call hacking and defacing a website because someone disagrees with a story? Sounds an awful lot to me like someone wants to "suppress dissenting views, eviserate free speech, and control the press."

Sorry, if they don't want me to think of them as hooligans and keyboard warriors, they need to practice what they preach. To truly believe in free speech, you have to believe in it for everyone which includes PBS etc. It's not free speech if it's only free for those that agree with you :P

Remember first and foremost that there is no connection between groups like LulzSec and WikiLeaks itself. They are separate entities, and while they may share common goals, I'm positive that WikiLeaks doesn't support their actions.

That being said, there is still no link between LulzSec and the suppression of views or impingement upon free speech. They didn't take pages about Frontline down, they didn't change that content to reflect their own ethos. All they did was hack the site and place their signature page on it. There was no effort to obscure the information that Frontline put forth in their documentary.

LulzSec isn't trying to cover up their inner workings/mistakes by imprisoning people for no reason. The US government is. If the sort of issues raised by the leaks aren't made public, the powers that be will learn nothing from them. They'll take no corrective action, nor will they voluntarily become completely transparent. This simply can't be permitted, and WikiLeaks is the only real line of defense at this point.

I never said there was a connection between the groups. I merely pointed out the irony in trying to promote transparancy, freedom of the press, and free speech by attempting to persuade others to not make use of those rights.

quote: All they did was hack the site and place their signature page on it.

No effort to obscure? What they did is a form of punishment the intent of which is to say don't run stories like that again.

quote: They best watch where they're sailing next time.

Sounds a lot like a threat to me along the lines of only say what we want you to or we'll hack you. You don't have to forcibly take away someone's rights to suppress freedom. You only have to bully them into fearing to excercise those rights.

Responsible mature people would debate the issues in open forums, or run their own stories on their own mediums. They would not resort to illegal activity, threats, and coercion to get their points across.

quote: I never said there was a connection between the groups. I merely pointed out the irony in trying to promote transparancy, freedom of the press, and free speech by attempting to persuade others to not make use of those rights.

I'm not sure how this action would persuade anyone to withhold their opinions. Typically this sort of thing only makes people more vigilant.

quote: No effort to obscure? What they did is a form of punishment the intent of which is to say don't run stories like that again.

Actually, it's more on par with graffiti. It's not even vandalism as no damage was done. Do you honestly think the hackers believe this would deter PBS/Frontline from doing more stories? I doubt it. It's more of a public protest than anything else.

quote: Responsible mature people would debate the issues in open forums, or run their own stories on their own mediums. They would not resort to illegal activity, threats, and coercion to get their points across.

The problem is one of volume. The voice of PBS is heard around the country -- some guys blog is almost invisible in comparison. They merely used the power of PBS to spread their own message. And as far as "illegal activity" is concerned -- civil disobedience is often justified when the government is using it's power to suppress dissenting opinions.